• cynar@lemmy.worldEnglish
    25·
    6 months ago

    For those who are confused. It’s an experiment to see if gravity is smooth or lumpy. Relatively assumes it is smooth, quantum mechanics says it is lumpy. By knowing what is happening, we can tell which is more wrong. Both seem hyper accurate in their realms, but neither allows for the existence of the other.

    Effectively, 2 pendulums are put close together and left to swing. Relativity says they will slowly move into sync. Quantum mechanics says they will move together in fits and starts. By checking at the end, they can see if the syncing is lumpy or smooth. They will also have to run it a huge number of times, to pull any difference out of the noise.

    Previous ideas for experiments relied on forcing 2 masses into a diffuse state, then letting them entangle with each other. Getting matter into such a state is hard however, let alone keeping it there for long enough to work. The new experiment dodges around this problem.

    • A_A@lemmy.world
      7·
      6 months ago

      Thanks for this nice explanation. Also, I would underline some of the requirements of the setup :

      … “the experiment requires long coherence times, torsion pendulums that lose little energy as they oscillate, and an ultracold environment.” …

      • cynar@lemmy.worldEnglish
        8·
        6 months ago

        It’s definitely not an easy experiment, it’s an order of magnitude easier than the other ideas though. It might even be within the realms of current equipment.

        • A_A@lemmy.world
          3·
          6 months ago

          Absolutely ! …and science discoveries often comes from people who are creative and knows technology : both in capacities and limits.

          • lad@programming.dev
            2·
            6 months ago

            As far as I understand, even if c is different in some circumstances or changes over time it would be hard to measure because everything else is expressed with c

            It’s like trying to measure if your fingers have grown longer, but doing it with only those fingers as a measure

            • HubertManne@kbin.social
              1·
              6 months ago

              when not under the effect and the big gravity well in teh area is the sun. maybe the voyager craft are far enough out for it to be weak enough.

                • HubertManne@kbin.social
                  2·
                  6 months ago

                  Good point and black holes are part of make me wonder about that given what it does to light and spacetime. All our measurements of the galaxy and universe is on a speed of light is in our gravity well and even though it drops off so quickly the suns is so huge we have to have quite a distance to get to where its inconsequential is way beyond earth. Knowing there it is the same 1000 au from the sun at high precision would be nice to know. It it showed any difference. Even slightly then it would be massive in our understanding of the universe.

    • lad@programming.dev
      2·
      6 months ago

      Not sure what are those “both” ways, but yeah isotropic or especially anisotropic speed of light would be nice to know for sure

      • A_A@lemmy.world
        1·
        6 months ago

        The speed of light being isotropic has been demonstrated already and I believe I know what they mean when they say “both ways” : since all demonstrations of the speed of light are based on “round way trip” from A to B then from B to A. But, no experiments can measure a one-way trip speed.

        • lad@programming.dev
          2·
          6 months ago

          Then I was probably incorrect, what would be a correct term for isotropic but depends on direction? Because I also meant one-way speed

          • A_A@lemmy.world
            3·
            6 months ago

            Hi lad,
            i was not certain so i double checked :
            https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isotropy
            Physics - - Electromagnetics :

            An isotropic medium is one such that the permittivity, ε, and permeability, μ, of the medium are uniform in all directions of the medium, the simplest instance being free space.

            … if you read this like i do, they do not care to diferentiate “round trip” and “one way” … and my vocabulary is not good enough to find a word that would fit.